Ben Phillips

Vice President, Real Estate Development, Develop Detroit

Ben Phillips

Ben Phillips has joined HPN as Vice President of Real Estate for Develop Detroit, a newly formed real estate and housing development company focused on the revitalization of Detroit neighborhoods. Ben’s community development leadership spans twenty years, focused on turnaround of troubled portfolios and building up development pipelines in emerging markets, including those in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. Experienced in the development of single family and attached for-sale homes, cooperative housing development and management, and a wide range of multifamily rental development strategies including new construction, adaptive reuse, historic preservation, and public housing redevelopment, Ben has created assets totaling $725 million. Ben is responsible for building the real estate business strategy and implementation platform for Develop Detroit.
Prior to joining Develop Detroit, Ben held a variety of executive and managerial positions for Mercy Housing, one of the nation’s largest developers, owners, and operators of affordable housing. In these roles, Ben was responsible for the largest residential development in the City of Santa Barbara in over 20 years, the first non-profit led redevelopment of public housing in Los Angeles, and an innovative program to privately finance the development of supportive housing based on fee-for-service vendor relationships with public and private health systems, rather than public capital subsidies.
A Michigan native, Ben received his started in community development by providing property management and development assistance to student housing cooperatives throughout the United States and Canada, of which he benefitted as a student at the University of Michigan where he received his Bachelor of Arts in Literature and Creative Expression.